Tips

Tips and tricks useful for Android Web Browser developers.

Our example commands typically use Chrome package name: com.android.chrome.

App management

Open app info settings

adb shell am start -a android.settings.APPLICATION_DETAILS_SETTINGS -d package:com.android.chrome

Disable an app

⚠️ Disabling an app clears all its data storage

adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 com.android.chrome.

Enable an app

adb shell pm enable com.android.chrome

Open default apps settings

adb shell am start -a android.settings.MANAGE_DEFAULT_APPS_SETTINGS

Default browser

Check default browser

adb shell cmd package resolve-activity --brief -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d http://www.example.com

Launch default browser

If no default available it will open the chooser:

adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.VIEW -d http://www.example.com

Reset default browser

Some devices won't let you simply clear your default Browser application through settings. You should be able to clear it by running adb shell pm clear <package-name> where package-name is your current default browser. However that did not even work on HONOR Magic V2 for instance.

Here is my workaround using device UI:

• Set an app as default browser
• Open that app info settings
• Disable that app

The downside is that you can't use that browser unless you re-enable it. I'm usually doing that using Chrome com.android.chrome since I typically have Chrome beta installed and a bunch of other browsers I can use instead.